Chapter Driver of Europe to Dry-as-Dust of D by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Driver of Europe to Dry-as-Dust

Driver of Europe. The due de Choiseul, minister of Louis XV., was so called by the empress of Russia, because he had spies all over Europe, and ruled by them all the political cabals.

Drogio, probably Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. A Venetian voyager named Antonio Zeno (fourteenth century) so called a country which he discovered. It was said to lie south-west of Estotiland (Labrador), but neither Estotiland nor Drogio are recognized by modern geographers, and both are supposed to be wholly, or in a great measure, hypothetical.

Dromio (The Brothers), two brothers, twins, so much alike that even their nearest friends and masters knew not one from the other. They were the servants of two masters, also twins and the exact facsimiles of each other. The masters were Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse.—Shakespeare: Comedy of Errors (1593).

(The Comedy of Errors is borrowed from the Menœchmi of Plautus.)

Dronsdaughter (Tronda), the old serving-woman of the Yellowleys.—Sir W. Scott: The Pirate (time, William III.).

Drood (Edwin), the hero of a novel called The Mystery of Edwin Drood, by Dickens. Only eight numbers appeared, which were published in 1870, the year of the author’s death.

Drop Serene (Gutta Serena). It was once thought that this sort of blindness was an incurable extinction of vision by a transparent watery humour distilling on the optic nerve. It caused total blindness, but made no visible change in the eye. It is now known that this sort of blindness arises from obstruction in the capillary nerve-vessels, and in some cases at least is curable. Milton, speaking of his own blindness, expresses a doubt whether it arose from the Gutta Serena or the suffusion of a cataract.

So thick a “drop serene” hath quenched their orbs,
Or dim “suffusion” veiled.
   —Milton: Paradise Lost, iii. 25 (1665).

Dropping Well, near the Nyde, Yorkshire.

… men “Dropping Well” it call,
Because out of a rock it still in drops doth fall:
Near to the foot whereof it makes a little pon [depository].
Which in as little space converteth wood to stone.
   —Drayton: Polyolbion, xxviii. (1622).

Drudgeit (Peter), clerk to lord Bladderskate.—Sir W. Scott: Red-gauntlet (time, George III.).

Drugger (Abel), a seller of tobacco; artless and gullible in the extreme. He was building a new house, and came to Subtle “the alchemist,” to know on which side to set the shop-door, how to dispose the shelves so as to ensure most luck, on what days he might trust his customers, and when it would be unlucky for him so to do.—Ben Jonson: The Alchemist (1610).

Thomas Weston was “Abel Drugger” himself [1727–1776], but David Garrick was fond of the part also [1716–1779].—Dibdin: History of the Stage.

(The Alchemist was cut down into a two-act farce, called The Tobacconist, by Francis Gentleman, in 1780.)

Drugget, a rich London haberdasher, who has married one of his daughters to sir Charles Racket. Drugget is “very fond of his garden,” but his taste goes no further than a suburban tea-garden, with leaden images, cockney fountains, trees cut into the shapes of animals, and other similar abominations. He is very headstrong, very passionate, and very fond of flattery.

Mrs. Drugget, wife of the above, She knows her husband’s foibles, and, like a wise woman, never rubs the hair the wrong way.—Murphy: Three Weeks after Marriage (1776).